When the 106th Constitutional Amendment was passed by both Houses of Parliament in September 2023, with 454 votes in favor in the Lok Sabha and unanimous consent in the Rajya Sabha, it was seen as a historic moment. But there is a way of living in the interval between the passage of laws and their implementation. After about two and a half years, Parliament has been called again to close it.Lawmakers will attempt to do what thirty years of political wrangling could not, get India’s women a guaranteed seat at the table of power. The occasion is the Nari Shakti Vandan Act, which is known as the Women’s Reservation Bill.
bills at a glance
The Women’s Reservation Bill, formally known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Act, is a constitutional amendment that reserves 33 percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women. This is not a new idea. Bills to amend the Constitution to reserve seats for women in Parliament and state legislatures were introduced in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2008. The first three bills lapsed with the dissolution of the respective Lok Sabhas, while the 2008 bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha but lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha. This makes the 2023 passage the culmination of a legislative struggle that has lasted nearly three decades. The alliance was once derailed by arithmetic, ideological disagreements and, at times, outright hostility. When the bill was finally passed in 2023, it was passed in a brand new Parliament building, a symbolism the government wanted to underline. Women constitute less than 15 per cent of the membership of the Lok Sabha and in state assemblies, women constitute less than 10 per cent of members in most legislative bodies across the country. It is this inequity that the bill was created to correct.
House after reform
If the proposed changes are made, the structure of the Parliament of India will fundamentally change, both in size and representation.The Lok Sabha is expected to grow from its current 543 seats to 850, reflecting decades of population growth since the last amendment in 1976. Of these, 815 seats will be allotted to states and 35 to union territories.Within this expanded House, one-third of the seats, approximately 283, will be reserved for women, marking the first time that such a quota has been implemented at the national level.
What exists and what is still missing
The bill coincides with the 30th anniversary of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments of 1993, which added panchayats and municipalities to the Constitution and reserved one-third seats for women in local bodies. That experiment, which lasted three decades, has yielded real results. But that reservation stopped at the village and municipal corporation levels. The Constitution, as it stood until 2023, had no provision for reserving seats for women in the Lok Sabha or state legislatures, a lacuna that took 75 years to be formally addressed.This reduction is proportionate to the decision taken by Parliament. From criminal laws to maternity benefits, property rights to policies on gender-based violence, decisions taken in Parliament affect women’s lives at every level. A 2003 study on the impact of reservations for women in panchayats showed that women elected under the reservation policy invested more in public goods related to women’s concerns. The case for extending that principle to Parliament is not merely symbolic.
Why wasn’t 2023 the finish line?
The Act passed in 2023 brought with itself the seeds of delay. The 2023 constitutional amendment provided for 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, but this quota would come into effect only after the delimitation exercise is completed based on the 2027 census, meaning the reservation would not come into effect before 2034 under the original law. The reservation will take effect after the census to be conducted after the enactment of the Bill is published and delimitation will be done to reserve seats for women on the basis of that census. The logic is that you cannot decide which constituencies are to be reserved for women unless you know how many constituencies exist and where their boundaries are and this requires both a fresh census and the delimitation exercise that follows.Census 2021 is still incomplete, having been significantly delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the next census is now proposed for 2027, much before the 2029 general elections. The amendment was, for all practical purposes, a law in name only.
Special Session: Why Now?
The government now proposes to amend the law for implementation based on the 2011 census, to ensure that reservation is implemented before the 2029 general elections. To do this, Parliament will have to amend Section 5 of the Act, which currently links women’s reservation to the delimitation exercise after the first census after the commencement of the law. As a constitutional change, Article 368(2) mandates approval by a majority of the total members in both Houses and at least two-thirds of those present and voting, a high bar that requires at least some opposition support.Along with the amendment to the Women’s Reservation Act, the government is introducing a Delimitation Bill that will dramatically redraw the electoral map which, as mentioned above, could increase from 543 to 850 after the amendment. India’s population has changed significantly since the current 543-seat House was last calibrated. The cap on the number of seats, dating from 1976, was created to prevent states that control their population from being punished in Parliament. Seeing it again now, in 2026, is as much a statement about national demographics as it is about women’s rights.
debate on delimitation
Delimitation is a periodic exercise carried out to redraw the boundaries of constituencies and allocate seats in line with changes in population, ensuring fair representation for the states. India has conducted such exercises several times since independence. For the first time in 1952, 494 Lok Sabha seats were allocated on the basis of the 1951 census. This was followed by exercises in 1963 and 1973. During the 1973 delimitation, the number of seats was fixed at 543, based on the 1971 census, when India’s population was approximately 54.8 crore. That number has remained unchanged since then.The government’s current proposal to expand the Lok Sabha by about 850 seats has triggered a heated debate, mainly focusing on the alleged North-South divide. Since the proposed redistribution is expected to be based primarily on population, northern states, where population growth has been higher, are likely to get a larger share of seats. In contrast, southern states, which have seen slower population growth, may see a decline in their relative representation.like state Tamil NaduKerala, Telangana, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have consistently argued that representation should not be determined by population alone. They point out that decades of effective family planning have resulted in low birth rates and warn that a purely population-based approach would unfairly penalize them for this success. Meanwhile, more populous states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh will benefit disproportionately.For example, MK Stalin argued that states that complied with central government pressure for population control should no longer suffer losses. Expressing this concern, the Telangana CM wrote to PM Modi and fellow southern leaders, urging them to oppose any expansion of the Lok Sabha on the basis of population metrics alone. In their letter, they warned that such a move would reduce representation and instead proposed a “hybrid model” that would take into account population as well as economic contribution and development indicators.
two sides of the argument
On the surface, the bill enjoys almost universal support. Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wrote letters to leaders of all parties in both Houses, seeking their support for the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill, and stressed that “this moment transcends any party or individual.” But there has been no consensus on the route and the objections of the opposition have become clear.senior congress leader Sonia Gandhi has criticized the government’s approach, noting that no draft amendments have been shared with opposition parties. congress president Mallikarjun Kharge Wrote directly to the Prime Minister, arguing that without details of delimitation and other aspects, it would be impossible to have any useful discussion on this landmark legislation and that the special meeting was called without taking the opposition into confidence. Time exacerbates these concerns. The session has been called during the ongoing state elections, scheduled to conclude on April 29, 2026, leaving opposition MPs juggling between campaigning and parliamentary attendance. Mallikarjun Kharge suggested that if the government really wants to move forward collaboratively, it should call an all-party meeting after the elections are over.a democratic arithmetic problemThere is one final lens through which this bill is worth examining: the sheer arithmetic of representation.Women constitute about 48.5 percent of India’s population. The number of males is about 51.5 percent. The 33 percent reservation for women in the bill is far less than proportional representation. Critics argue that the bill goes a step further and does not reflect the true demographic weight of women in India’s democracy. Defenders of the 33 per cent figure say it matches benchmarks already established in panchayats and municipalities and represents a realistic floor rather than an aspirational ceiling. The reservation shall be provided for a period of 15 years, although it shall continue till such date as may be prescribed by law made by Parliament, and the seats reserved for women shall be rotated after each delimitation. The rotation mechanism means that no constituency will be permanently designated as a women’s seat, an attempt to prevent permanent restriction of voter choice to any one area.
what does it stand for
What started as a legislative demand in 1996 has become a constitutional amendment looking for implementation thirty years later. The special session will determine whether Parliament finds political consensus to close that gap before the 2029 elections.There is no credible opposition to the spirit of the Bill. According to political analysts, the question is whether the opposition can afford to vote against the bill in the election season, as it could impact their electoral position in the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. In the current political scenario of India, no party is ready to be seen voting against the representation of women.All arguments about seats, states and census data are genuine. But behind all this is that women have for too long been kept out of the rooms where decisions about their lives are taken. That’s what this bill is about.
